Bayside Church, Roseville, CA
When not on tour, Christian musician and pastor Lincoln Brewster can usually be found leading services at The Bayside Church, a four-campus church that typically draws a total 12,000 worshippers for weekend services. To meet the needs of the expanding congregation attending services at the church’s flagship location in Roseville, CA, church leaders recently expanded the seating capacity of the sanctuary from about 1,800 to 2,300.
Along with the increase in seating capacity, Brewster and senior audio director Lee Fields, who oversees audio operations at all four locations, decided it was time for a comprehensive system upgrade.
As Fields notes, the previous “point and shoot” system mainly covered the floor (about 900 seats) and relied upon large delay boxes to cover nearly 1,000 seats in the “bleacher” section.
“The new seating arrangement is still 900 on the floor and another 1,400 or so in new stadium-style seats,” Fields says. “With the previous system, over half of the seating area would have been in coverage by delay speakers — not ideal with the worship experience we are trying to create.” Along with Brewster, the Roseville campus features a contemporary worship band comprised of six or seven musicians.
Working with Greg Slape from SES and Jake Cody, House of Worship manager at Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Brewster and Fields opted for a system including NEXO GEO S12 line array elements plus RS18s and NXAmps.
“The NEXO line array has allowed us to cover the room much better from a single source, and every seat sounds amazing and surprisingly similar to the next,” says Fields, who had gotten the chance to hear NEXO GEO S12s perform during the 10 years he spent as a touring engineer, supporting performers at a variety of gigs including music festivals, conferences and more. “Every time I got my hands on them, I loved them.”
Fields, who credits Brewster as “an incredible audio engineer in his own right — he has mixed most of his own records,” also notes that he “was very much involved” in the upgrade.
“Lincoln and I both have been to hundreds of churches and have seen a variety of PA systems: PAs that rival stadium touring rigs, PAs way too small for big rooms, PAs way too big for small rooms, PAs that sound great and are just right for a church, and PAs that cost way too much money for a church to be spending money on,” Fields continues, noting that, along with its suitability for the Roseville campus sanctuary, the NEXO GEO S12 has proven itself as a cost-effective choice.
“This is the biggest win for us, knowing that we didn’t have to spend zillions of dollars on a system,” Fields says. “It feels great knowing our church can go about the duty of assisting people with the money we saved by choosing the product we did, and we didn’t sacrifice anything.”
“We chose the NEXO Geo S12 because it was the best-sounding box we tried,” says Brewster. “It also happened to be the least expensive.”
The Roseville campus isn’t the only Bayside Church location equipped with Yamaha and NEXO gear. The three others are using NEXO systems with NX Amps and Yamaha LS9 Digital Consoles.
In all, there are also more than 10 Yamaha digital consoles in use at the four locations. And on the recent 2012 Christmas tour, Brewster took along a pair of the new Yamaha CL5 Digital Consoles as well as a NEXO GEO S12 system.
Lakewood Church, Houston, TX
Senior pastor Joel Osteen, whose broadcasts reach more than 10 million viewers worldwide every week, leads 16,800-capacity Lakewood Church in Houston, the largest “megachurch” in the U.S. Technical director Reed Hall and senior audio engineers BK Beard and Brad Duryea recently worked with Shawn Mullins and Joe Smart of Covenant Communications on a upgrade for the sound system at the facility, which had been converted from secular use as the former Compaq Center in 2005.
Together, the team designed and installed a Harman audio system for the main sanctuary’s big stage and surrounding seating. The new system includes 60 JBL VTX V25 line array cabinets and 20 VTX S28 subwoofers, flown in four arrays.
The configuration includes main L-R arrays (20 V25 enclosures each), two suspended arrays (10 VTX S28 subwoofers) and two side arrays with 10 VTX V25 each). The main L-R arrays curve down 90 degrees for coverage that spans from the front to back seating areas.
The system also includes 26 JBL VerTec VT4886 subcompact line array elements — eight for the choir area, 12 as outfill and six for front-fill. Audio I-Tech IT120000HD amplifiers — 73 in all — power the loudspeakers and amps, and system BSS Audio BLU-800s are put to use as signal processors.
Noting that Osteen uses a lavalier mic, Hall noted that “the existing system was a bit deficient in headroom and, because lavaliers don’t have the output [i.e., gain before feedback] of handheld mics, it was sometimes a challenge to get a loud-enough level from Osteen’s lapel mic. Management also felt that the coverage from the older system’s front fills was inadequate, and that the system was deficient in upper midrange and high-frequency clarity.”
Covenant’s Smart noted that the Crown IT12000HD amplifiers, by themselves, made a “huge” improvement in headroom and clarity, but couldn’t solve all of the existing issues. Subsequently Hall, Beard, Duryea and Smart demoed various line array loudspeaker systems.
Hall and others from Lakewood Church attended a VTX demonstration conducted by Paul Bauman, senior manager, Tour Sound, JBL Professional in Los Angeles, then conducted a shoot-out with VTX V25 line arrays and other speakers in the church itself. The V25s got the nod based on high-frequency smoothness, clarity and extension of the V25 and its D2 dual-diaphragm, dual-voice-coil compression driver.
A key bonus was the considerable amount of low-end, which let the design team reduce the number of subwoofers they had planned to deploy. Hall also credited the V25’s tightly-focused low-frequency output as a big help in taming the challenge posed by a few hard surfaces in the room near seating areas along with metal-framed sheetrock partitions.
When setting up the system, Hall notes, Beard and Duryea went through every cabinet one by one, dialed in each group of speakers and then integrated the entire system. Harman’s HiQnet System Architect and BSS London Architect programming software and communications protocol made that process easier.
Harman’s Allan Devantier and Paul Bauman also helped tune the installation using the Harman Audio Test System (HATS).
With the latest enhancements, Hall feels that the 16,800-capacity location now offers attendees an acoustic experience comparable to what they might expect within a 4,500-seat theater.
Covenant’s Smart agrees. “For those that haven’t heard the new JBL VTX series, they can’t imagine the level of performance these speakers achieve,” he says. “While JBL VerTec has long been seen as the industry standard, the VTX technology is truly a game-changer for live sound applications.”
“Osteen wants the system to sound everywhere the way it sounds in the front row, and with this system we have nailed it,” Hall concludes. “Compared to the old system from the console, Osteen’s voice sounds 50 feet closer than it did before.”
Hope United Methodist Church, Trinity, FL
For years, well-intentioned church members tried to fix failing components that were part of the aging sound system at Hope United Methodist Church in Trinity, FL with purchases from local music retail stores. But despite their efforts, the system’s performance deteriorated.
Then a series of channel failures on the old analog FOH mixer left the church’s audio crew with an insufficient number of inputs. That prompted the church to seek out Christian Sound Installations (CSI) and build a new sound system from scratch.
The result is a well-received setup that includes Ashly Audio processing and amplification and Danley Sound Labs loudspeakers, subwoofers, and stage monitors, plus gear from Sennheiser (G3 wireless), Allen & Heath (a GLD console), Aviom (PM for the drummer) and a Tascam hard drive recorder.
“Like most mid-sized churches in the current economic climate, Hope United needed to stick to a strict budget,” says Paul Garner, CSI’s owner and chief designer — but not at the cost of acceptable sound quality, performance or reliability.
To optimize the ratio of cost to overall sound quality, Garner advocated doing away with the funds earmarked for acoustical treatments.
Although church leaders had considered those treatments necessary to increase intelligibility, Garner was able to persuade them that, by using the exceptionally tight pattern control of Danley loudspeakers, enough energy could be kept off the walls to negate the need for the acoustic treatments.
Along with the Danley loudspeakers, the church now has six new Sennheiser G3 wireless microphone systems, a ClearSonic drum shield, and an Aviom personal monitoring system for the drummer. A new Allen & Heath GLD-series digital console gives the operator the flexibility of a modern digital system with the intuitive feel of a classic analog console. CSI recessed the equipment rack into the wall adjacent to the mixer, and the back of the rack is accessible from a nearby closet. A Tascam hard drive recorder lets the church easily record all of the sermons for easy uploading to the church website.
An Ashly Protea 3.6SP processor provides all input and output conditioning for the new sound system. “I’ve had great success with the entire Ashly processor line,” says Garner. “The bang for the buck I get with the 3.6SP and 4.8SP can’t be beat. For a straightforward installation, they have everything I need, without heaps of stuff I don’t need. Importantly, the audio path and algorithms are clean and natural sounding.” In addition to providing crossovers, limiting, and overall EQ, Garner used the Ashly 3.6SP to signal align the house system with the stage monitors.
Two Danley SH-100s are arrayed roughly twelve feet off the center of the church angled slightly down and out, with a single Danley TH-212 subwoofer covering all of the seats. Two Danley SM-100M low-profile loudspeakers serve as ultra-high-fidelity stage monitors.
With an EASE model, Garner determined that the Danley pattern control would yield the most even coverage of all the viable alternatives, but hearing a Danley system sealed the deal. “I brought the client down to my church, where we run a Danley system,” says Garner. “The clarity and impact is so obviously beyond what a conventional system can deliver. They were convinced.”
Three Ashly KLR-2000 amplifiers power the Danley boxes. “The Ashly KLR-Series sounds excellent and has proven to be perfectly reliable,” says Garner. “We’ve put a lot of them in and had zero failures, zero callbacks, and no issues whatsoever. That means a lot in today’s market. It’s nice to deal with companies like Ashly and Danley that recognize that there’s still something to be says for quality while still working hard to keep costs in line.”
First Christian Church, Venice, FL
First Christian Church in Venice, FL offers two contemporary and one traditional service every Sunday. To upgrade the church’s spoken word intelligibility and music reproduction, church leaders sought out Cape Coral, FL-based Creative Sound Solutions (CSS) for an upgrade.
CSS’ Rob Robinson, general manager and co-owner, turned to WorxAudio Technologies’ X3-P compact line array as a solution for First Christian Church’s 500-capacity sanctuary. Noting that the space is wider (80 feet) than deep (50 feet), with the stage/pulpit area facing into the width of the room, Robinson needed a loudspeaker system with broad horizontal dispersion for consistent coverage side to side as well as front to rear.
“The lack of consistent sound coverage with the previous sound system created a number of issues,” Robinson says, most notably “speech intelligibility.” But the new system also needed to optimize the music coming from the church’s five-piece praise band and chorus.
WorxAudio’s X3-P line array is a three-module, all-in-one compact system with 160-degree horizontal dispersion. “After consulting with Hugh Sarvis at WorxAudio Technologies, we determined that a central cluster — positioned 20 feet over the pulpit area — would serve the room nicely,” Robinson says.
With the upper two modules providing 10-degree vertical dispersion and the lower module delivering a 25-degree vertical pattern, the X3-P offers a 36-degree vertical dispersion as a whole. The speakers are powered by WorxAudio’s PMD-1.5 digital power amplifier with built-in DSP processing.
“Ken Wagner, the church’s media director, was really impressed with the fact that no matter where he walks throughout the room, sound quality is remarkably consistent, clear, and free or dropouts,” Robinson concludes, crediting the system for “great sound quality and high speech intelligibility everywhere you sit.”
St. Andrews Lutheran Church, Mahtomedi, MN
Audio Video Electronics (AVE) recently upgraded the sound system within the 1,200-seat sanctuary at St. Andrews Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, MN.
AVE vice president Kevin Crow notes that, while visually “beautiful,” the sanctuary has “a nearly five-second reverb time.” As a result, he says, “going into this project, we knew that speech intelligibility was one of our primary issues of concern.”
But the focus was on more than just the spoken word. Along with a prominent Casavant organ, which was relocated to Minnesota from its original home at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, the church’s traditional services also feature an 80-member choir and chamber group.
Contemporary services with a “bluesy” rock beat take place in a separate space on the church’s campus, its Great Hall.
With the requirements of both the spoken word and classic church music remaining the top priorities at the main sanctuary, AVE specified an L-Acoustics line source system featuring left and right arrays each comprised of nine KIVA enclosures flown adjacent to three KILO low-frequency extension cabinets.
Two SB18i subs are flown behind each KIVA array for true LF reproduction, and all systems are powered and processed by a total of four LA8 amplified controllers.
“With the previous loudspeaker system, the sound always felt rather distant out in the pews,” Crow recalls. “Not anymore. The KIVA-KILO arrays immerse the congregation in audio that is both wonderfully full and naturally clear. It’s an amazing setup that is perfectly matched for this client, and everyone there is extremely pleased with the results.”
Crow also credited the addition of high definition Earthworks choir mics as a boon to the overall audio experience, also noting tuning and processing via SmaartLive and Lectrosonics Aspen DSP. “The net result for the overall system is high spatial intelligibility and perfect sound-stage tonal balance.”
Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Sharon Hill, PA
Since it was founded in 1891, Holy Spirit Catholic Church has held a special place in the hearts of Philadelphia-area residents. In the early 1900s, the church served as one of the few non-segregated churches and parochial schools in the region.
Dedicated in 1961, Holy Spirit’s current sanctuary is a unique and welcoming space, resplendent with ornate woodcarvings, wrought iron, and magnificent stained glass, including one that commemorates John F. Kennedy’s inauguration as the country’s first Catholic president.
But the same elements that make the sanctuary so beautiful to behold also make it a rather acoustically challenging space. As Tony Albano of Avondale, PA-based Naamans Creek Audio Video explains, the room’s configuration is anything but ordinary.
“It’s a very different type of room,” says Albano. “The chapel itself is surrounded by smaller sub-chapels. The walls are largely brick, and the ceiling is about 30 feet high at its peak. It’s a complex space, and very reflective, and they’ve always had problems with intelligibility.”
To address the room’s sonic issues, Albano designed an audio system that uses four Community Entasys column line array loudspeakers. Two more Entasys columns provide delay toward the back of the room. A Crown CTS-4200 four-channel amplifier drives the system, with Rane RPM-88 providing system DSP.
“Their previous system had been pretty problematic,” says Albano. “Parishioners complained about loud volume but low intelligibility, particularly along the center seating areas. The Entasys columns were the ideal solution for focusing the sound away from the walls and windows and into the seating area where it belongs,” he says, adding that some of church’s long-time parishioners have remarked on the improvement in spoken-word intelligibility.
St. Barnabas on the Desert Episcopal Church, Scottsdale, AZ
St. Barnabas on the Desert Episcopal Church, based here, recently renovated their sound system around a pair of Tannoy QFlex 40 steerable array loudspeakers.
The T.S. Montgomery-designed structure, built in 1960, has a 350-seat sanctuary with columns and arches, a high ceiling, and a raised circular altar with choir risers and a pipe organ located directly behind it.
CCS Presentation Systems, also based in Scottsdale, designed and installed the new sound system along with lighting and video upgrades.
“The sanctuary was originally designed to have the acoustic principles and characteristics of larger cathedrals,” explains Rod Andrewson, chief engineer at CCS Presentation. “As a result, it’s a highly reverberant space that had been plagued with vocal intelligibility issues for decades.” Andrewson notes that a number of acoustical treatments had been applied in an attempt to resolve the problem, with little success.
The new Tannoy gear is part of a complete renovation of the sanctuary’s sound gear spurred by the donation of a new organ. Church leadership wanted worship services to feature organ music, but they also wanted improved vocal intelligibility — all with minimal impact on the church’s aesthetics.
“After we viewed the church, we were told that the sanctuary would be stripped of all acoustic treatments and I knew we had a real challenge on our hands,” notes Andrewson, who admits contemplating “not having anything to do with the project at all.”
Drawing on his successful implementation of Tannoy QFlex digitally steerable arrays elsewhere, however, he opted to provide church leadership with a demo, and they went ahead with the plan to install the slim profile speakers with paintable cabinets and grills.
“We showed them that we could very precisely divine and steer the acoustical imprint on the audience,” Andrewson explains. “I think that demo was, hands down, what won us the job.”
The system design features two L-R QFlex 40 self-powered loudspeakers mounted columns about 20 feet in front of the altar — the best available option to cover the majority of seats. Each loudspeaker, measuring 83 inches high by seven inches wide, has eight 4-inch LF drivers, 16 3-inch LF drivers and 16 1-inch HF drivers. Each driver has a discrete amplification channel.
VNET, Tannoy’s digital processing and network protocol, is hosted on a PC located in the rack room behind the sanctuary’s back wall, linked to the loudspeakers via a VNET USB and RS232 interface.
For additional coverage, the system includes a pair of Tannoy Di5 compact loudspeakers in the narthex, with more Di5s covering the choir behind the altar and for the pulpit area.
Fielder Road Baptist Church, Arlington, TX
In addition to services for worshippers attending a 3,800-capacity auditorium equipped with advanced AV gear, Arlington, TX-based Fielder Road Baptist Church reaches out with two worship services every Sunday in a nearby middle school’s auditorium — one in English, the other in Spanish.
Sound Productions worked with the church staff to support the church’s mobile outreach efforts with gear that includes an Allen & Heath GLD mixer.
Don Erdmann, Fielder Road Baptist’s main audio video engineer, credited the GLD for its compact size, reliability and ease of operation, including the ability to store all settings from week to week to enable fast setup and consistent sound at each service.
He noted that when Allen & Heath rep firm Aldridge Marketing demoed the GLD, a church volunteer was able to begin using the mixer in about 20 minutes.
“The GLD has an analog feel with pots and dials,” Erdmann notes, “but it’s also got a large touch screen for the digital users.”
To take advantage of the mixer’s “best of both worlds” capabilities, Erdmann sets up a GLD “layer” (scene) for each user. This becomes the user profile and makes it possible to customize the GLD for each service and volunteer. “That way, the experienced users have lots of power, but we can also make it easy for the new people.”
The GLD’s built-in “dSnake” digital snake was a major plus. “We really needed a digital snake for quick setup and the other digital mixers we looked at didn’t have this feature,” says Erdmann, who also uses the GLD’s Aviom interface for on-stage monitoring.
“Everyone who has used our GLD has fallen in love with it,” Erdmann says. “It’s everything we need for our outreach ministry. If we had a problem with the mixer in our main auditorium,” he adds, “I wouldn’t hesitate to unpack the GLD.”
Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Reno, NV
The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd has been a fixture in downtown Reno, Nevada, since the 1950s. Over the years, the church’s congregation has grown steadily, and last year plans were drawn for a new 500-seat worship center to be constructed adjacent to the original sanctuary.
Like many of today’s churches, Good Shepherd has been expanding outside the traditional Lutheran model, offering a range of services to cater to a broader congregation. “They offer a traditional Lutheran service early in the morning, followed by a more contemporary service with full band, and then one more traditional service,” says Scott Schmidt of Reno-based JC Productions.
Not surprisingly, that diversity calls for a flexible audio system that can handle everything from a straightforward organ and choir to a full-on rock band. With that in mind, Schmidt opted to install a PreSonus StudioLive 24.4.2 digital console at the front-of-house mix position. The desk is used to mix the sound in the sanctuary, as well as sending multiple monitor mixes to the musicians, and making live recordings.
“The StudioLive is a great console for them,” explains Schmidt. “It gives them all the power and features of an expensive digital console, and it fits their budget. We didn’t have to purchase any outboard effects, which saves them money and space; they’re just using the processing that’s built into the console.”
The church’s audio crew took to the console immediately. “They recently hired a part-time technical director, just before the grand opening,” says Schmidt “He’s a young guy, very technically savvy, and of course he took to the StudioLive quickly. But even for an old analog guy like me, the console was easy to figure out.”
The StudioLive’s remote-mixing capability was one of the first priorities, followed closely by live recording. “We ordered them an iPad and a couple of Mac Minis,” says Schmidt.” They’ve set it up to record directly into Capture, and of course, the iPad allows the technical director to walk around the room and make adjustments and to walk up to the stage if need be.”
Schmidt also included some video, with a Christie digital projector feeding a Da-Lite 16:9 video screen behind the band. For the musicians, the back wall is equipped with four 55-inch NEC flat-panel displays, combining to create a single video wall.
“The system has performed flawlessly for them,” says Schmidt, who also credited the acoustic design of the new space. “The architect has done a number of traditional sanctuaries, and really did a fantastic job,” says Schmidt. “Most of the walls are not parallel, and there’s a sloped ceiling that’s about 60 feet at its highest point. The wall behind the choir is angled about five degrees, which really helps with reflectivity.”
Traders Point Christian Church, Indianapolis
Traders Point Christian Church in Indianapolis, IN has a heritage that dates back to 1834. The TPCC congregation now totals close to 4,000 members. Church Solutions Group’s Daryl Cripe and Nate Krause worked with technical systems engineer Brent Whetstine to equip a new worship center for the congregation, which opened in 2007, with a pair of SD10s and SD racks at FOH and monitors that have a capacity for 96 inputs and 48 outputs. Whetstine praised the gear both for sound quality and ease of use.
The main SD10 console interfaces with a Yamaha DME64 processor by way of AES/EBU, to drive a large LCR array of HPV MAD A-9s, SB412s, MTM-1s and VLFs, all powered by Yamaha PCN series amps. The monitor desk feeds 16 stereo mixes (10 of which are PSM900, with more to be added), two wired mixes for bass and drums and four wireless IEM systems the church owned prior to the upgrade.
The new system’s pluses include the system’s smart keys, which let users make quick mix changes like effects and sub-boosts without having to hunt down channels, the ability to program scenes with recallable functions in greater detail, and volunteer-friendly features such as Snapshot Notes and Virtual Sound Check.
“I found the EQ to be both subtle and musical,” says Whetstine, who also credited the effects presets as “perfect. Our mixes, even in our auditorium, sound more live and energetic with stock programs, versus sounding like a concert hall, or very distant-sounding. The stock reverbs just sound like natural ambience without drawing attention to the effect itself.”
“The training portion is an unbelievable windfall for a church,” Whetstine adds. “Being able to track our rehearsals and then work on our mixes without the pressure of other people in the room has not only made our mix engineers incredibly good, it has turned out to be an incredible teaching tool.”
Summing up, Whetstine concludes, “the DiGiCo consoles have made us better at what we do in general, and offer our worshipers a message that is sonically clear. Ultimately, that is our greatest goal.”
